1. Field of the invention
The invention relates to an installation for processing and/or assembling components.
2. The Prior An
Installations of this type are basically manufactured as loosely concatenated or rigidly concatenated installations. In loosely concatenated installations, so-called workpiece carriers are moved along the installation completely independently of one another. In rigidly concatenated installations, the workpiece carriers are interconnected in their movement so that the positions of the workstations along the conveying device depend on the technical design of the conveying element. Each of the two types of installation has its own range of application, the rigidly concatenated installations being used where only a few workstations are concatenated installations since if faults arise in one workstation, all workstations arranged along the convey rag device must be blocked.
In order to achieve a high quality of manufacture when components are processed in such installations, precise guidance of the conveying element with the receptacles for the components is essential.
Rigidly concatenated installations are already known--from DE-OS 26 40 593--in which the individual workpiece carriers are connected by chain conveyers. Up until now, it has been difficult to series-produce such installations or to make them adaptable to varying requirements with a varying number of workstations. Moreover, it was difficult to install the processing devices. The further known rigidly concatenated installations for processing and assembling components are formed by rotary tables which may possibly also be Concatenated by way of additional conveying devices--e.g. according to DE-OS 31 34 195. Such rigidly concatenated installations, which may be formed by rotary tables, cannot subsequently be extended by adding extra workstations and take up a great deal of room, especially when a plurality of workstations are arranged in tandem. Furthermore, access, assembly and also maintenance are made difficult by the compact arrangement of the assembly and handling devices or processing device disposed inside the rotary table.
In a further known installation--according to WO 89/06177--of the same applicant, the conveying element can be formed by workpiece carders which are interconnected by chain-shaped joint arrangements forming a continuous strand, which is guided in a drive and rerouting station, and which forms thereby also a linear-oriented conveying device for components along which the workstations are arranged.
Due to the chain-shaped arrangement of the workpiece carriers next to one another, the conveying element has an increased mass, which is disadvantageous for acceleration processes, in particular at short cycle periods, and therefore, these installations are used particularly for small components and they can only be used to a certain extent for large, and in particular long components.